


Valley of the Shadow

by Zeke Black (istia)



Series: Pandemic Notes [4]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, POV Chris Larabee, Pandemics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:21:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26226331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/istia/pseuds/Zeke%20Black
Summary: Four months into the pandemic, Covid-19 strikes close to home.
Relationships: Chris Larabee/Ezra Standish
Series: Pandemic Notes [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1753729
Comments: 10
Kudos: 39





	Valley of the Shadow

Chris finished polishing his latest whittled creature--a mountain troll with craggy features, rounded shoulders, and long, dangling arms--and placed it on the table with the rest of the collection. He'd pack them all up soon in a shoebox and send them to Billy. Mary would take her own precautions, perhaps let the box sit for a week so any inadvertent virus on it would die, before letting Billy dive into the box.

Covid-19 was all around them now, suffocatingly close and pressing ever nearer at a frightening pace. So far, it hadn't touched any of the people he personally cared about. Nettie Wells was the most vulnerable, given her age, and JD and Casey had been taking extra precautions all along while staying with her from the beginning at her small house--four months and counting, now. Thanks to them, she never had to expose herself to get groceries or prescription refills and other necessities. By this point, though, the skyrocketing infection rate around Four Corners was damned unnerving for everybody, even the youngest and fittest. The rest of them were living on carefulness and hope.

A noise in the doorway drew his eyes to Ezra, who was standing stiffly with his phone in his hand. The set look on Ezra's face made Chris straighten, his back muscles tensing as if for a fight.

"I have to go." Ezra's voice was clipped.

Chris swallowed the automatic _No!_ he wanted to flat-out dictate, and managed an even voice. "Where?"

Ezra brandished his phone, lifting an arm that looked stiff as a tree branch. "Mother's in the hospital. She's been feeling unwell for over a week, apparently, but decided I shouldn't be told because, and I quote, 'It's just a little thing and I'll be fine soon.'" His fingers tightened on the phone and his whole body looked like it was vibrating. "Then she--I'm not sure--worsened or collapsed last night and managed to call an ambulance. Since she has that would-be sixth husband of hers, Preston Wingo, down as her local contact, the hospital called him. And he called me."

Ezra stared at him for a long moment like he was drowning and Chris crossed the room to him. Ezra looked down again at the phone. "I've booked a flight for 1 p.m."

Chris glanced at his watch. "I'll drive you."

Ezra gave a quick nod, then turned away. "I have to pack." He walked rapidly to the stairs and up them. Chris followed, his mind whirling.

Ezra got a small carry-on bag from his closet and opened it on the bed. He threw things haphazardly into it: underwear, socks, a couple of shirts. Chris went into the ensuite and quickly packed Ezra's toiletries into a bag, then went back into the bedroom and silently handed it to Ezra, who took it with a nod. He looked distracted and worn already, as though a hundred different terrible scenarios were playing through his head one after another.

"I could come with you," Chris said quietly.

Ezra's head jerked up and he looked startled, then a wan, but warm, smile lightened his face for a moment. "I'd like that, but it's bad enough for me to be flying during our escalating infection rates; I don't want to risk you."

"It's my risk."

Ezra's eyes lingered on him with genuine warmth now. "No," he murmured, reaching up to put a hand behind Chris's head, "it's our risk and I need to know you're safe. Waiting here safely for me."

He pulled Chris's head down for a deep kiss. When they drew apart, they shared a smile that could light fires on the sun, then turned back to the pressing down-to-earth reality of this day.

They reached the airport and parked with only three-quarters of an hour to spare, but the airport was so eerily empty that Ezra had no trouble immediately checking in. They weren't much for public displays, so they shared a quick squeeze of their hands mostly hidden between their bodies, then Ezra turned briskly away and Chris stood and watched till he disappeared through the security door.

:::::::

Chris packed up the carved wooden toys for Billy when he got home, then meandered around the house with a coffee cup in hand. The quiet and emptiness pressed in on him, like a deep freeze despite the desert heat. No near-constant, lilting voice either close by or calling from some far corner, often in its native drawl, but sometimes imitating other folks' accents if something they'd said or done caught his attention, eliciting either sarcasm or outrage, amusement or incredulity; sometimes they were people he and Ezra knew, other times, just some celebrity or, hell, the weather forecaster.

No light laughter drifting on the air. No bright, intrusive, unignorable presence, in clothing and personality both--naked Ezra tended to be as loudly flamboyant as Ezra in his gaudiest get-up--to amuse him, surround him, annoy him, energize him.

The house felt flat, like most of its life had been sucked out.

He straightened things in the bedroom and contemplated the king size bed he'd be occupying alone. No sprawling naked limbs covering his; no filthy chuckles and delving fingers and hot wet tongue....

Or maybe he'd sleep on the couch.

He was on the couch holding a book, just to do something with his hands, when Ezra called. St. Louis was an hour ahead of them; it was past 11.30 p.m. Chris's time, so after midnight there.

"I can't see her." Ezra's flat voice signaled that his clipped, cool, controlled persona was in charge, carrying him through this rotten crap. "I didn't expect to, but that's confirmed. No visitors to the ICU. Even if someone's dying--" his paused for a pair of uneven breaths "--they probably won't let you in to see them."

"How is she?"

"On a ventilator. As Mr. Wingo said. Which means it's very bad. The kindly but busy nurse I spoke to didn't offer anything more granular. It's a wait-and-see situation. Might be weeks. Could be over in a day. They know more now than they did at the start about how this virus works inside the body, but it's still basically a crapshoot."

Chris took a breath. About what he'd reckoned, and he figured Ezra had, too. Chris kept his voice soft and even. "Where are you?"

"I'm at Mother's. Everything's so neat here that there's nothing to do. I wouldn't be surprised if she tidied up before calling an ambulance." His voice broke completely then on a tiny catch that in anybody else would've been a loud sob.

Chris closed his eyes. "Have you eaten?"

"No. I had a sandwich on the plane. I'll get some breakfast tomorrow. Probably."

"Will you be able to sleep?"

Ezra gave a low, bitter laugh. "I doubt it. This house--it's drenched in her. Her scent, her color scheme--chosen to flatter her, of course--her knick-knacks that are souvenirs of dozens of gambling trips or...her other endeavors. Even the dish towel is from some cruise ship she finagled some fool or other into taking her on."

 _Like this house,_ Chris thought, _permeated with Ezra's personality and various stupid little objects he considered trophies._

Like Chris's life itself these days, streaked through with Ezra's bright shine like veins of gold in quartz.

After a silence, Ezra said, hesitantly, all the earlier steely control slipping away, "I should let you go...."

So Chris sat on the couch and talked. He talked and talked, the way he never did except when it was needed. He told Ezra about packing up the box for Billy, about his plans to trim the thorn bush in the back garden, and how he reckoned they should get the roof tiles repaired before the winter rains. He talked without waiting for an answer or trying to elicit any response. He spoke in a monotone, soothing and low. He just talked for talking's sake, because he knew Ezra needed to hear his voice, but would never ask.

When he finally stopped, silence settled for a few moments and he hoped maybe Ezra had dozed off. But then Ezra spoke in a similarly soft voice. "I'll phone you again tomorrow."

"I'll be here."

"I know."

:::::::

Ezra's calls were erratic. Early morning, evening, late at night. Sometimes three or four times a day. Sometimes they were a quick five-minute check-in; other times, Ezra vented while Chris listened, or, if it was that kind of day, Chris simply talked about anything and nothing into receptive silence. Whatever Ezra needed each time.

The one dependable time Ezra called each day was just after noon, immediately after his single scheduled update with the nurse who was caring for Maude. If he called the hospital at any other time, the harried staff could only give a general message, which boiled down to, "She's still alive." The ICU nurse was quick, but more informative.

The third day was bad. "Her heart failed and they worked on her for almost an hour before getting her stabilized. Or whatever counts as stable while on a ventilator."

Ezra sounded strained and wrung-out. It was a day when he simply needed to hear Chris's voice.

:::::::

The next day, he met Vin and Josiah at Inez's for a drink. They sat at one of the round tables outside, in the shade of its umbrella, still the only part of the Saloon currently able to open. A stuffed wolf stared fixedly at him from across the table where it occupied the seat between Vin and Josiah. Inez herself brought them drinks and they exchanged their non-news for hers on how business was doing. She'd had to lay off a couple of workers, which bothered her, but was so far staying above water with her reduced staff and the sale of the food and drinks she was able to serve outside or as takeaway.

When she left, Chris pulled his aluminum straw from his pocket and put it in his drink, then slipped the other end beneath his mask without dislodging it much. Josiah and Vin's straws were silicone; Josiah's red and Vin's blue, which today happened to match Vin's sky-blue shirt. They chatted a little, but since they all three tended to quietness, they mostly just enjoyed the company, the drinks, and the sunshine. Despite the wolf's glare.

A little later, as they dug into Inez's lunch tacos, Josiah said, "I called Ezra yesterday. Hadn't heard from him for awhile. He said he's fine, but he sounded distracted. Have you heard from him?"

Chris looked up to see Josiah looking at him with his head tilted. Chris wasn't sure if any of the others knew he and Ezra had this thing between them, but he thought Josiah and Vin might suspect, if anybody did. Still, nothing of Ezra's news was his to tell.

"Yeah, I've talked to him," he said noncommittally, and turned his attention back to his plate.

After a brief silence, Vin idly brought up the question of when and how and if baseball was going to manage to field any kind of season this year or not.

:::::::

Four days later, at the end of a full week of his being in St. Louis, Ezra was acerbic and clearly running on fumes and not nearly enough sleep.

"I'm getting to the point where murdering somebody sounds like a fun outing," he declared as soon as Chris said hello. "I've run out of things to do. I've cleaned out Mother's fridge. I ran the dishwasher. I gathered up what I think was laundry, though all the clothes in what seems to be a hamper looked pristine, and ran them through the washer and dryer and hung them up in her closet. I've fended off Preston Wingo's multiple suggestions that we meet and cry into our whiskey together by reminding him of the pandemic."

He took a long, deep breath and let it out straight into Chris's ear. When he spoke again, he simply sounded lost. "It could be weeks, Chris. After she nearly died the other day--it could go on for weeks."

"Come home," he said immediately. "You can still keep in touch with the hospital from here." He clenched his free hand on his thigh during the ensuing silence.

Then Ezra said, "I want to. I'm not doing any good here. There's nothing I _can_ do. But...just leaving because it would be easier on me.... I don't think I can, at least not yet. I'd feel like I was abandoning her." He gave a shaky laugh. "Not that she knows. It's just-- I know it's simply fanciful nonsense, but I still don't think I can leave yet."

Chris closed his eyes. "All right. Do you want me to come?"

He made the offer every time it seemed Ezra needed it, but Ezra always said an adamant no.

And so the wait continued, their lives in a dark limbo. They talked whenever Ezra needed it, for as long as Ezra needed. Chris jogged in the park at dawn, before the heat became prohibitive and too many people were about, not all of them concerned about social distancing or wearing a mask. He usually spent part of his days at Inez's, eating his meals there, often joined by one or more of the others.

Ezra had told the others he was visiting his mother, though not why or that she was in the hospital.

The rest of the guys were brainstorming plans on how they might safely ease back into working once the raging pandemic threat wasn't quite so raging, at some hazy future date that kept getting hazier. Now wasn't the time to plan guided wilderness trips for groups of tourists, especially since a good portion of their customers at any given time were international tourists. But any big group of strangers, wherever they hailed from, were a no-go right now.

Rain had suggested trying to create some kind of virtual tours, which JD and the others were batting around with increasing enthusiasm. The idea was appealing not least because it would mean they could all escape the city for awhile. Living alone together in the wilderness, they could all forego masks and not worry about meeting strangers. And if the idea of virtual tours didn't catch on with customers, well, it wouldn't be a total loss since they could edit them into spiffy new ads for when business picked up again. All in all, an attractive prospect, though with some logistical issues, such as needing to acquire better camera equipment. Rain, who doubled as guide and official photographer on their trips, was looking into the costs.

At least the planning was a distraction. They'd made good money over the past several years with their guided wilderness outings, so all of them were solvent; they'd survive all right financially, at least for the next few months, by cutting expenses. It wasn't money worries getting to them, but the forced idleness. They were all used to active lives shepherding groups through shooting rapids, rock climbing, parasailing. Being bored and restless was a small matter, however, considering the devastation many people all around them were suffering.

Then the devastation came home.

:::::

Ezra's call on a Tuesday almost three weeks after he'd left was brief: "I'm back. No change with Mother. I just needed to get out of that empty house where I wasn't doing any good and couldn't even see her."

"What?" For a confused moment, Chris glanced around his still, quiet house, as though Ezra had somehow sneaked in and was calling him from some other room.

"My place," Ezra said in his flat, tired voice.

"Why?" Chris blinked, then took a breath and got hold of himself. "All right, I'm on my way."

He propped his phone between his shoulder and his ear as he gathered his keys and headed for the garage.

"No." Ezra's voice was firm. "I'm probably okay, but I need to isolate. I've been on a plane with a bunch of strangers, and even though we were all masked.... I met the ICU nurse in charge of Mother's case a couple of times just outside the hospital as she updated me. I had to go to the grocery store and take taxis--" His voice wobbled uncharacteristically: "I need you safe, Chris. I have to stay away from you just for a couple more weeks in case I've picked it up somewhere."

Chris got into his car. "I'm coming. It's up to you when I get there if you want to come home with me or not. The house is big enough for us to stay six feet apart; you can use the second bathroom, eat in the dining room while I'll use the kitchen table. You can take over the study even more than you already have while I'll stick to the living room. You can use the guest bedroom, if it makes you feel better."

He started the car. "You belong at home, Ezra, especially right now. But it's your decision. I'm heading out now; be there soon." He ended the call and dropped the phone onto the passenger seat as the garage door rose.

When he parked outside Ezra's apartment complex, he picked up his phone. When Ezra answered, Chris said, "I'm here." After a long silence in which he couldn't even hear Ezra breathing, he ended the call and waited. Not for long, though: ten minutes later, Ezra emerged from the front entrance holding a carry-all and wearing a mask. Chris fished his own mask out of his pocket and put it on. Ezra glared at him for a moment through the car window, to which Chris quirked an eyebrow, then Ezra visibly sighed and got into the back seat.

"If you get sick because of me, I'll never let you forget it's all your fault," was Ezra's greeting.

"Right, got it, my fault. Of course." The mask hid his smile, but his eyes met Ezra's in the rear-view mirror for a long moment, then he turned his attention to the road and took Ezra home where he belonged.

When they got out of the car--on opposite sides of it, at least eight feet apart--he got his first good look at Ezra and his heart stuttered in his chest. Ezra looked oddly small, perhaps because his broad shoulders were slumped uncharacteristically. His face was pale with dark smudges under his eyes, which instead of being dancing and bright, looked dull, defeated. Ezra managed a slight smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes above the mask, but it was a candle's flicker rather than the incandescent blaze of light Chris was used to, and his gut ached to see it.

Ezra should never look like this, like a rag doll with the stuffing knocked out of it.

When they were inside the house, Chris went to the far end of the living room, then turned to face Ezra, who hovered in the doorway from the hall.

"No change at all in Maude?"

"No. She's still on a ventilator. Her heart continues to be occasionally, unpredictably, erratic. Denisha, the ICU nurse, doesn't believe they'll be able to take her off the ventilator for at least another week, probably longer. Possibly a good deal longer."

Chris sat down on the couch. He waited. Eventually, Ezra moved gingerly from the doorway to the chair closest to him, a good twelve feet away. He sank into the chair with a sigh, leaning his head back. His eyes slid closed. After a moment, he said, "I was going crazy cooped up there, surrounded by Mother's things, and not doing any good. Mother didn't even know I was there. I'd cleaned the place from top to bottom, even though it was already picture perfect, and run out of anything to occupy myself with. I put clean sheets on her bed and towels in her bathroom, so it's ready for when she--"

His exhausted voice stuttered to a stop.

Chris winced, but said, quietly, "You can keep in touch with the hospital from here."

"Yes." Ezra opened his eyes a slit, staring at the floor. "They have my number, in case of...emergency." He gave a hollow laugh. "Though it's really just one long, continuous emergency. It's like--" he lifted a hand and made a vague circling movement beside his temple "--an emergency klaxon that never stops blaring. Some days, I just want it to stop, but then I remember that when it does go quiet, it'll be because Mother is either dead or recovering, and there's no way to know which it'll be. I have no idea if this limbo is better or worse than its ending will be."

Chris watched as Ezra slumped back into the chair. "Maude's tough." Chris spoke softly. "She'll fight as hard as she can."

"Mmmm." Ezra gathered himself and stood up. "While I have complete confidence in Mother's determination and will, I know even she can't necessarily defeat the virus currently ravaging her body that's already killed 187,000 of us."

Chris stood to face him. "Good you're home, anyway."

Ezra's eyes crinkled at the corners again. "Your bullying ways do come in handy sometimes. Just...don't let me get too close for the next couple of weeks, all right? I need that, Chris."

"Yup, got it. You're a pariah to be avoided at all costs. Half the house is your leper colony."

He won a startled, real laugh from Ezra before Ezra turned with a wave and headed upstairs with his bag. Chris listened to his footsteps and removed his mask as he felt the house coming alive around him.

:::::::

They fell into a routine where they passed at Ezra-approved distances from each other in the house, never coming close to colliding. Ezra stayed home, expending as much of his nervous energy as he could in various garden projects that required hard, manual, shirtless labor. Chris watched him from afar, feeling vaguely guilty for appreciating Ezra's dirt-streaked, sweaty bare chest and back muscles flexing during his frenzied, single-minded attacks on hedges, bushes, and flowering beds driven by his unrelenting worry. He left home only to take early morning and late night jogs--going the opposite direction from Chris's usual route--and spent the bulk of his time out back, either working himself to exhaustion or sprawled asleep in a lounge chair after reaching the point of said exhaustion.

When he saw the others during his next daily visit to Inez's, Chris told them Ezra was back from visiting Maude, but isolating himself because of his travels. He brought food home and left it in the fridge for Ezra to heat up.

A week after Ezra's return, Buck, Vin, Josiah, Nathan, and JD, along with Rain and Casey, took off to film their first virtual wilderness tour. They had the upgraded camera equipment and were outright fucking delighted to be escaping the city. Louisa, who was fonder of urban life than nature at large, and who handled their bookings and accounts and other office work when they were in operation, stayed home. She and Nettie would be checking in with each other since they were already in a bubble, given how close Buck and JD were, and had been visiting together all along.

Chris declined the guys' attempts to convince him to go along. At any other time, he'd've been just as freaking relieved as the rest of them to get out of the city, but not now. Ezra might not let him get close, but he knew that his just being around helped Ezra, just as having Ezra close made everything better for Chris. Leaving Ezra alone right now was unthinkable, impossible. Hell, they even lost cell phone service once they were out in the wild.

So he stayed home and he counted the days till he could grab onto Ezra and pull him fully back into his life, his bed, his arms. They were at 14 minus 2 days of isolation, another warm August day. Chris came home from Inez's, put Ezra's food into the fridge, washed his hands, then looked through the window to check on whether Ezra was still out in the garden sweatily hardening his abs by use of shovel.

Ezra was in the garden, but not working. He was just standing on the grass, shoulders hunched, hands dangling by his sides, one holding his phone. Chris could suddenly hear that emergency klaxon Ezra talked about sounding a raucous din in his ears. He went out onto the porch.

"Ezra?"

Ezra raised his head, looking as vulnerable, lost, and confused as an abused puppy.

"Jesus fuck." Chris went straight down the stairs and across the lawn to Ezra in long strides, no hesitation.

"She's dead," Ezra said as Chris reached him and grabbed him, pulling Ezra hard against his chest and wrapping his arms around him in a grip too tight to ever be broken.

"She fucking died." Ezra's voice shook, but there was as much anger as grief in it. "She's a _statistic_ , Chris! 187,001. How she would've hated ending up a statistic. She was supposed to die in some unique, flamboyant way; have something happen that was bizarrely weird enough to make headlines, you know? Not end up a minor nothing of a statistical footnote." After a pause, he added, quiet and helpless, "It's not like Mother at all."

His hands were balled in the back of Chris's shirt and his face was pressed hard into the side of Chris's neck. Chris could feel the dampness. He kept his own arms clamped across Ezra's sweaty, bare back, and bent over him, trying to envelop him in the protective cloak of his own body as much as he could.

"Her heart?" he asked when Ezra fell silent other than his ragged breathing.

Ezra's head jerked against him.

He just held Ezra for a few minutes, letting his own swirling thoughts settle. "All right. We can leave for St. Louis this afternoon--"

Ezra stiffened in his hold. "Not you. I'll go and--"

He started to pull away, but Chris wouldn't let go. "We're going together, Ezra. We'll deal with everything together. No more you over there and me over here."

"But--"

"We'll drive," he said, forestalling any objection Ezra was about to make. "It'll take us a couple of days, but it'll be that long before we could arrange a funeral, anyway. Covid's currently hitting St. Louis pretty hard. You can make arrangements by phone as we drive. We'll camp along the way, so we'll encounter hardly any strangers at all."

Camping was second nature to them on their wilderness tours. Even Ezra, despite his loud complaints, didn't actually mind camping out beneath the stars--as long as it wasn't raining--and this time they'd be able to lie together.

Chris pulled back and met Ezra's eyes. Ezra was frowning, his eyes narrowed.

"It's you and me," Chris said. "For better or worse, and all that." He lifted his hand in a vague wave.

Ezra's eyes, the lashes dark and spiky with damp, narrowed further. After a moment, he said, "For a secret relationship, we appear to have become oddly wedded."

Chris shrugged, and matched Ezra's dry tone: "Reckon it's time to dispense with the 'secret' part, at least."

Ezra managed a half-smile, then they turned in unison and headed into the house to pack, to plan, and to close up the place for what might end up being a longish stay in St. Louis to take care of everything.

Together.


End file.
